On your way home from work, you stop by the supermarket. You need to pick up some ingredients for dinner. Do you remember everything—or do you forget a crucial item? It depends, in part, on your working memory. “Working memory” is the brief short-term memory that enables us to react to and store something we see, hear, or otherwise sense.

This is the kind of memory that To-Do List Training, from BrainHQ’s Memory category, targets. Unlike many of the other BrainHQ memory exercises—which are designed to train memory by improving the accuracy with which you take in sensory information—To-Do List Training directly engages the working memory processes in the forebrain. The neurons in the forebrain interpret what the brain hears, allowing the brain to remember and use the information for a time.

Your task in To-Do List Training is to select items in a specific order based on verbal instructions that are given.

Here’s how the exercise works:

1. A speaker icon will appear on screen to indicate that verbal instructions are being given. Listen to the instructions and remember the requested order of items.
   
2. When the instructions are done, several buttons with items will appear on screen.
   
3. Select the items on screen in the order that the instructions had stated. The items on screen may shift around or change between selections.

If an incorrect answer is given, you’ll hear a “bonk” sound and you might not be asked to remember as many items in the following turns. If a correct answer is given, you’ll hear a “boop” sound and you may be asked to remember more items in the following turns. In both cases, the level then continues, repeating from Step 1 above.

You can review the exercise video tutorial below:

To-Do List Training from BrainHQ from Posit Science on Vimeo.

As you progress through To-Do List Training, it becomes more challenging in these ways:

• The order in which you’ll need to select the items can change depending on the phrasing of the instructions.
• The item names become more similar (“Rope B” and “Rope P” for example).
• The verbal instructions are spoken more quickly.